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The release of iOS 4.2.1 is imminent, and the surprise is that with it comes the first free Mobile Me feature. Find My iPhone is now available to all iOS users without paying a Mobile Me annual subscription, and is easily set up from an iPhone/iPad/iPod using an existing or new iTunes account. Here’s a quick walk through of the steps using an iPad. Read more…

In the name of research my iPad has been jailbroken using the Spirit app. There hasn’t been much of a need for jailbreaking as the settings app sits in the expanded six place iPad dock, and provides much faster access to settings than the iPhone equivalent. SBsettings is now installed on the iPad, but Winterboard currently has some issues on the iPad. Changing the theme on the iPhone makes it look much better, but the iPad supports wallpapers and the apps look way better without any fiddling so the appeal of theming is much reduced.

There’s not much to report on the jailbreak, it’s just as simple as the recent iPhone attempt and results in Cydia on the iPad desktop. There’s a warning in Cydia that not everything works on the iPad yet, and some iPhone software may cause a crash that needs a software restore to fix.

Trying the iPad’s iPod app yesterday resulted in an instant crash that I initially thought may be related to the jailbreak, but posts on the Apple support forum showed the issue is not uncommon. The unlikely fix of launching the Videos app before the iPod app actually worked for me so all is back to normal.

Apple today unveiled many of the new features of iPhone/iPod/iPad OS 4, with the disappointing news that some of the features will only be available on the current generation of iDevices. More on that later, the new features were dominated by the seven chosen for attention:

Multitasking

There wasn’t much chance of this being left out if Apple wanted to stay competitive with Google’s Android platform. New API’s are provided to allow apps to run as background services until resumed. Background apps can allow control from the lock sceen, and display notifications. There are seven background services available:

I’ve been working my way through the iPod V3 firmware looking for new features, and got to the point where I wanted to copy the screenshots across into iPhoto. The problem was iPhoto gave an unrecognised file format error every time I tried copying the PNG files, and would show the iPod as docked even when it was disconnected.

A quick web search led to a page at the Apple support forums, and some advice to unmount the device in Image Capture. It’s not immediately obvious how to do this, so for anyone with the same problem here’s a few simple steps to the fix. Read more…

Those looking to Pwn their device without wiping it clean can now use the Windows version of QuickPwn 2.1. Currently available as a torrent or from several mirror’s, the new version supports the following devices:

iPhone 1G can be unlocked and jailbroken

iPod Touch 1G can be jailbroken

iPhone 3G can be jailbroken

The iPod Touch 2G is not currently supported for jailbreaking, and the iPhone 3G cannot currently be unlocked.

Love of Hate it, the App store has been a financial success and is proving very popular with iPhone and iPod owners. There have been complaints about the lack of moderation on user comments, and I found a perfect example of this. Here’s an App from the store that will search the web for iPhone formated wallpapers. Not something I would buy myself but it will likely appeal to a lot of users.